New and aspiring builders often see amazing creations online and at LEGO conventions and expos and wonder if they could ever build like that. The creators they admire all once thought the same thing. Fortunately, there are a lot of great ways to up your brick-building game.
Why Building Practice Matters
Just start building. The key to doing anything well is being willing to do it poorly, over and over, until you get better. Your first new creations you make might not look like some of the impressive builds you’ve seen from others, but keep on building and you’ll learn and get better each time.
Learn from Official LEGO Sets
Assembling official LEGO sets from instructions, especially the ones with higher age ranges on the box, is one great way to introduce yourself to building techniques and some of the new parts available. And you don’t have to treat the completed model as the end of the process. Consider if there is a way the set could have been designed differently, and then grab that brick separator and give it a try. Some ideas:
- Adjust a brick-built character’s expression or pose.
- Build a setting for your set.
- Rebuild in a different color.
- Renovate a building interior.
- Enclose a building originally built with an open back.
- Add an entire level to a structure.
Study Techniques from Other Builders
- Tips&Bricks is a prolific creator of infographics to share techniques from some of the latest creations by amazing builders throughout the AFOL community.
- Former LEGO set designer Tiago Catarino shares instructions and video tutorials for his creations (as well as doing set reviews and such on his YouTube channel).
- Jason Allemann makes LEGO move, in all sorts of ways. And he has a website, JK Brickworks, full of instructions and videos. He’s also turned a couple of his ideas into official sets through LEGO Ideas.
- The Brick Builder’s Handbook by Deepak Shenoy (Deep Shen) has several great articles on building techniques (and the math behind them, if you’re into that sort of thing) that he uses in large architectural builds. Also, he does some great mosaics. Check out his Instagram feed, or read the feature on him at The Brothers Brick.
- Just want to know more about all things LEGO? Read a LEGO fan media site like bricknerd.com, with hundreds of deep-dive, long-format articles spanning a huge range of subjects.
- Tom Alperin wrote a book about LEGO and architecture, but he is probably known equally well in the community for freely sharing ideas (and labels) for LEGO organization.
Come to a HaRdLUG meeting!
We love to share ideas. If we aren’t an expert in what you want to learn, we might have the same questions or might know someone who is!